17. How Partnerships help you Scale with Don Campbell

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript has been created using fireflies.ai – a transcription service. It has not been edited by a human and therefore may contain mistakes.

 00:00 
Dom Hawes 
Welcome back to Unicorny, the antidote to post rationalized business books. This is the podcast for senior executives who want to find out how other businesses are building value through marketing. Last week on the show, I interviewed Joel Harrison, the erudite and celebrated editor in chief of B2B marketing. Were joined by the silky toned B2B, CMO. Georgina Gilmore. Now, we covered a lot of ground, but the core of the show was about how marketers are not being included in strategic initiatives like mergers and acquisitions. Honestly, I'm still shaking my head in disbelief that businesses wouldn't bring their best creative brains into the MNA process until the last minute. Now, if you're in B2B and you haven't listened, why not tea it up after you've listened today's show? This week, we're talking about using partnerships and alliances to scale. To do that, I'm joined by co-host Russ Powell, and together we're interviewing Don Campbell, Head of Alliance and Partner Marketing at superfast growth technology company Endava.  

 
01:06 
Dom Hawes 
Now, they've got 12,000 people across the globe, and they specialize in software engineering and IT Consulting. As we've been discovering. As we record more and more shows on Unicorny, so many B2B organizations think marketing is limited to promotion. Spoiler alert it's about a lot more than that. Businesses operating in complex markets often need to market their product or service with other organizations in order to meet all of a customer's needs. It's what my marketing hero, Jeffrey Moore, called whole product marketing in his seminal how to for Technology Marketers ‘Crossing the Chasm’. So, with the help of two experts today, we're going to look deeper into partnerships and alliances. We're going to be talking why, what, and how. If you operate in complex markets and you're struggling to gain traction or establish meaningful market share, partnerships just might be the answer to you winning the future.  

 
01:59 
Dom Hawes 
The core of today's conversation is about how Endava is using partnerships and alliances to scale and win the future. It's a subject we touched on in season one with Adam Morgan from Premium Credit, and he spoke to us about marketing through regulated intermediaries. Those are downstream partnerships. Today, we're talking about upstream partnerships with service providers like cloud payment service providers, and more. Over the next 30 minutes, we're going to get some context by learning about how the marketing business works in Endava. We're going to explore what makes a good partnership. We're going to look at marketing development funds known as MDF, and Donal talks about how to balance multiple partner relationships. Be sure to listen out for what Donal has to say about partnering with competition, too. That is, to my mind, a mind blower. Before we do any of that, let me introduce my co host.  

 
02:49 
Dom Hawes 
Regulars will know Russ Powell. He joined me to talk to Ruth Connor earlier this year newbies need to know that heads up specialist B2B Tech creative agency Sharper. B2B marketing. Now, Sharper is just three years old, but it already works with some of the biggest and the best in the business. He's ideal to help me out today. Russ, hi.  

 
03:10 
Russ Powell 
Hi, Dom. Thanks for having me.  

 
03:11 
Dom Hawes 
Well, you're very welcome.  

 
03:12 
Russ Powell 
It's lovely to also welcome our expert witness for today, Donal Campbell, head of alliance and partner marketing at Endava. Endava is a 12,000 people strong digital transformation and software development company founded in London in the year of the millennium, but these days is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  

 
03:30 
Dom Hawes 
There you go. Welcome to the show.  

 
03:32 
Don Campbell 
Thank you. Good to be here.  

 
03:33 
Dom Hawes 
So, Don, before we get stuck into the meat of it, I was blown away when were researching this show that here's a company, a fast growing technology company founded in our very own London in the United Kingdom, and it listed in New York. What does that say about our ability to take businesses through and scale them onto public markets?  

 
03:49 
Don Campbell 
It's a bit of a damning indictment, isn't it?  

 
03:51 
Dom Hawes 
Isn't it?  

 
03:51 
Don Campbell 
It's a sad state of ours, but really good for Endava to be recognized in that shape. In terms of how companies are foster or grown here, it's easy, isn't it?  

 
04:01 
Dom Hawes 
Let's get stuck into some context anyway. Don, why don't you tell us how did you get into marketing in the first place?  

 
04:06 
Don Campbell 
Not a direct route, to be honest. I don't know many that were some people spring out of bed. Marketing is what I want to do. For me, it was film. I did a film degree when I started university. I was really interested in that. I thought that would be my career. When I finished university and had a pile of debt, the first job I got was insurance. At insurance, I was asked to attend some events, and that was the first flavor of marketing. I thought, I really enjoy this bit. I love the public side of it. I got more involved with the web stuff and then thought, this is more my speed. This is absolutely what I want to do. Went back to school, did my SIM diploma, and then moved into marketing again insurance, but with a marketing focus.  

 
04:42 
Dom Hawes 
Okay, cool. In your early career, when you were learning the basics that came through the Chartered Institute or was there on the job learning? Too?  

 
04:48 
Don Campbell 
On the job. I mean, the education is really useful, really helpful in terms of framework, but the learning has always been on the job for me. It's always been almost by Osmosis, been lucky enough to have some really good marketers around me as I was growing up, too.  

 
05:01 
Dom Hawes 
In your time in marketing, do you think businesses approach to it has changed?  

 
05:05 
Don Campbell 
Yeah, definitely. Talking about promotion and that be a mindset of businesses. Promote, promote, drive, leads that way, whereas marketing has evolved, I think, or layered into the business in a more effective way. We're much more in contact with thought, leadership, content driven. It's very much about engagement rather than banging on the door from a sales point of view, but from how do we foster a relationship. Marketing has definitely evolved into that kind of sphere. I like that.  

 
05:30 
Dom Hawes 
And what about Endava? What are you able to tell us about how the marketing function at Endava is set up? Because as you may know, a lot of our listeners are not marketers, they're either CFOs or CEOs and it's always nice to be able to set context of what does marketing mean?  

 
05:43 
Don Campbell 
Sure, it's a big company, like a very big company, 12,000 strong, the marketing apparatus, all the people within there, it's cross functional. We have a brand comms team who are there to deliver the high level profile for the company itself. Within that structure there's the demand generation team, which is what you might expect is there to engage to create that awareness and conversation surrounding all of this is on the boots lead generation teams as well. Social media, quite a not overtly complex structure, but we all play into each other imagine like a complex Venn diagram. That's how we kind of fit in terms of we deliver.  

 
06:17 
Dom Hawes 
Although you build product, you are a service company, right?  

 
06:19 
Don Campbell 
We're services, so we all refer to as ideation to solutions. We're there to help solve problems for large enterprise organizations. So we're delivering technology for that. What that technology is, is up for grabs at the beginning in terms of what's going to be the best for the solution for the customer, but we see ourselves in that solution makers.  

 
06:36 
Dom Hawes 
Okay, so does the marketing team get involved in pricing and any of the other P's or obviously we're going to talk about place today and clearly there's a promotional functionality there too. Does marketing get involved at all or ?  

 
06:48 
Don Campbell 
It has a say in certain things, but the areas, the way the business is built think of it like a consultancy. A customer is coming to us with a complex requirement, how do we solve this, the pain points and we're there to deliver that solution. Price does have a factor in that, of course, but that's much more to do with rates. It's more about the delivery of that solution, how we then explain that through some kind of narrative that we've solved this problem and then deliver that.  

 
07:12 
Dom Hawes 
Thinking now about the wider industry, not necessarily your specific company, but in an ideal circumstance, doesn't matter whether it's a product or service business. How would you define marketing's role?  

 
07:23 
Don Campbell 
I always think of it in terms of how we create a conversation. We have an ideal prospect base or even existing customers. How are we generating or fostering a conversation with them and what's that conversation about? I always try and put myself in the shoes of a prospect and think if we have a few minutes of their time, what are we saying to them? That's where my focus of marketing is pushed through, is like, what are we saying to them at the end of day? What value are we trying to deliver for them? That boils into what proposition we're going to do. The function of marketing for me is to instigate and start that conversation and nurture it to the point where it's more than a conversation, it's an engagement where they need some support.  

 
07:57 
Russ Powell 
How do marketing and sales interact? Yeah. What's the relationship like between sales and marketing? At Endava?  

 
08:02 
Don Campbell 
It's a healthy one, it's a good one. The other companies I work for, you can either have a friction between sales and marketing or marketing almost be like an add on after the fact. In Endava it is much more cohesive. We're very much so a growth marketing organization. We're there to help with the bottom line and that's recognized by ourselves. Where we try and push our efforts, it's more meaningful for sales. Where we deliver our content based marketing programs, that is hand in hand with the sales units. We are developing our marketing plans with their sales campaigns. So it's quite interlocked. The engagement we have isn't all the way through. There's a genesis of like here are the base that we're after we agree on that, then we go off, we craft our plans and we meet back in. We weave in almost like an agile program delivery.  

 
08:47 
Don Campbell 
We have sprints of like how well is a campaign doing.  

 
08:49 
Russ Powell 
Are you doing a lot that's account based or are you doing broad brush or I guess kind of what you're talking about before. It's kind of the long and short of it.  

 
08:56 
Don Campbell 
It's both and it's a good mix for that. As our Toolbase, as our martech stack develops, we're able to do more sophisticated things with marketing. Yes, we have a broadcast program goes out and trying to grab the leads or the engagement for that and then we have a more sophisticated run of that where we're able to identify personas within organizations and be able to target them in different ways. So it's a mixture of both.  

 
09:18 
Dom Hawes 
Look, let's spin because we're here today to talk about P Place and I'm particularly interested in the discussion we're going to have because it's not that usual to find a service company that is building channel or that is building partners and alliances. Why would a business like Endava want to build a partner alliance network when.  

 
09:34 
Don Campbell 
It comes to alliance and partnerships in Endava, it's not that it wasn't a no brainer. It's like we work with so many different technology vendors, we deliver so many solutions on these platforms all over the place. We try to remain agnostic. We're consultancy driven in that way. We want to deliver the solution. The customer doesn't need to worry about the tech at that point, we just know that we can solve it. When we're creating this partnership with a vendor, it's got to be cooperative, we have to have a relationship with that. It can't just be we'll open our address book for them or vice versa. It's got to be something more than that. The reason for its creation is where we move into new territories or we are increasing our footprint in certain verticals. An effective way to do that is through partnerships. It is a foot in the door, it's association so it makes sense for us to do that but doing it with the right partners is the tricky bit and obviously that's a big part of what I'm involved with.  

 
10:27 
Russ Powell 
Do you or do you differentiate between a partnership and an alliance?  

 
10:30 
Don Campbell 
There's no hard and fast rule, it depends on what type of marketing you can throw another one in there in terms of like associative bodies, that's something else that will come into the realm of this almost if you ignore the terms partner, alliances, membership bodies. It's about a relationship you're going to have with someone that can help deliver a solution with you for the benefit of the customer. Whatever model that looks like that's what we're interested in doing is delivering a solution for the customer and how we go about that. Some are more strategic than others, some are just tactical, some are short term. Going in with that wider scope of what does this meaningfully mean to us, what is it we're going to deliver for the customer is really important for us. I tend not to try and compartmentalize them. It's just a case of we have a great relationship with Google or Amazon or whoever it might be and that's the model we're going in with.  

 
11:16 
Russ Powell 
How do you ensure that those relationships you set up are mutually beneficial no matter what shape they take?  

 
11:21 
Don Campbell 
That's the tough one, because you will have areas which are hyperscaler. You want to be in the cloud world where you almost have to have a relationship with Google, with Microsoft, with AWS and it's almost a fade of complete where you're like of course it's the assumed but how do you make those meaningful? We're very verticalized in terms of how we approach the market so we have a very specific vertical proposition and we build that out with those partners going down. Not to disparage in terms of a pecking order, but partners that are not those three large players fall into certain categories in terms of how we define what our story is with them and this is almost stopping anything that we've done previously with them is understanding what our actual value prop is to our customer base. A tendency is to go down the vertical route with that sometimes pan vertical.  

 
12:07 
Don Campbell 
It's neater for us to do vertical and then building out what our story is with those. It's almost on a case by case basis but it does need a lot of evaluation to it. Something else that throws into the mix there is like the appetite the partner has to work with you. You'll have some who have channel models and they have a library of documents and then it's off you go to market and sell our tin, fine. We want to have a much deeper relationship than that. We want to go to market with them, we want to be seen hand in hand with them in the marketplace. That to me is partner marketing because anything else that you're just describing a service you deliver.  

 
12:39 
Russ Powell 
Do you have members of the marketing team specifically dedicated to that partner marketing activity or is it kind of threaded across everything?  

 
12:46 
Don Campbell 
It's threaded across everything and again, it's evolving this continuous improvement side of things. When described, the team cross function, the way we split our demand generation team is by territory and by industry. Each head of demand gen is responsible for a number of verticals in a certain geo. The partner element, which is me, kind of hovers over that but I'm there to try and plug into their teams as best we can. Say we're at a particular event and there's a big partner presence of that event. We want to make sure that we're synced on that. We want to make sure that we're going to do some cross blogging across socials or something to leverage up and amplify that we are partners with whatever player it may be. It's growing, it's changing but mostly it's threaded in.  

 
13:28 
Russ Powell 
I mean, were chatting about acronyms before we hit record on this, but the biggest acronym in channel and partnership and all that kind of stuff is MDF. How is the MDF conversation approached in terms of what you look at with partners?  

 
13:41 
Don Campbell 
Again, case by case, for the non marketers, it's marketing development funds. The MDF conversation, again, it's never a tricky conversation to have because it's very matter of fact we're spending money to promote someone else's brand as well as our own. It makes sense you co opt that. The way we approach it's almost always by a 50/50 split. If you're going to ask for money, you need to match that money. You need quite a defined plan or case when you go to them. Some partners are much more kind of stringent in terms of what they ask for in terms of detail. Some are not fast and loose, but give more leeway. They understand that the money down to the pence might not go exactly to the dot and something. Where we approach it is a case of we're amplifying both our brands, therefore it makes sense, it's co spend, so it's an easy request, it just depends on each one has a different process, some more cumbersome than others.  

 
14:29 
Dom Hawes 
What about measurement, then? If you're working on joint campaigns, what kind of measurement metrics are you being asked to provide?  

 
14:35 
Don Campbell 
It's a mix. Sometimes the ones we would hold ourselves to account for regardless would be just in measurement engagement. I talked about HubSpot, talked about how people are arriving on our site or engagement, whatever it might be, we look at those metrics, of course, and where we're crafting at the beginning a value proposition with the partner. We have an eye on what type of results we want to be seeing and they have to be ambitious but realistic. Revenue is a mean one, obviously, but that's so far down the funnel for us that it's difficult to say, right, we ran this activity and because the quite complex engagements you're not going to get answer straight off the bat, you're looking at a lead time, six months or more. We look at other areas of it and something we're certainly getting much better at is around the nurture process.  

 
15:18 
Don Campbell 
We're looking at the almost like the intent data that were revealed through we're running a white paper over here and we're seeing some blog content over there, or a podcast release and seeing the same eyeballs on those and drawing conclusions. Our KPIs inform our marketing process too, but they're the kind of ones we hold a contrast to from the partnership side. They want to see that too. Some are much more interested than others. They just want to see how many downloads do we get, how many attendees do we have? That's fine, that's no problem for us. It's more about their journey, how far along are they on that journey, and that's what we're trying to bring up to them when we review and report on. 

 
15:54 
Dom Hawes 
Donal’s bang on the money here. It's a journey, not a destination, so you can't look at metrics from a single point in time and hope to get insight. What matters is how things trend. Now, many people dismiss what they call vanity metrics, but I actually think they can be sort of important. Well, at least they have a place, because ultimately they're indicators of success, like listener downloads, numbers of attendees, eyeballs and that kind of stuff. They may not mean anything in their own right, but when you put them all together, they could be important indicators of progress. Now, I'd keep those kind of metrics probably inside the marketing team, but they are important. They're part of the journey, not its purpose, that's clear, but I wouldn't dismiss them out of hand. When it comes to partner marketing campaigns like the one Donal's talking about here, you need to keep your eyes on the horizon while also identifying success criteria for both partners.  

 
16:46 
Dom Hawes 
Put another way you need to look at long term benefit to both parties because that's where you're going to see the true value of a campaign when it comes to both brand and revenue. You're listening to Unicorny with Dom Hawes, powered by Selby Anderson, the marketing group that helps complex businesses win the future. Coming up on the podcast, Don tells us how Endava sometimes partners with competitors and gives tips on how to keep those kind of tricky relationships contained and mutually beneficial. We also discuss partnering with hyperscalers, what socioeconomic trends are going to affect business in the coming year, and why the next twelve months should be about innovation for marketers. BUT First, I wanted to ask Don how much involvement the marketing function has in finding new partnerships. And here's what he said.  

 
17:36 
Don Campbell 
I'd love to say it's all on me. It's not. We're a team. We're always looking for new partnerships, but hate the word strike a balance.  

 
17:43 
Dom Hawes 
It's okay to use it.  

 
17:45 
Don Campbell 
You got to strike balance because there's only so many hours in a day. Yes, you can only do as much as you can. If all of a sudden we had got ten times the amount of partners, we can't service all that. That goes against almost the ethos of partner marketing for me is that you need that collaboration and that means dedicated time for each one. It can't just be, oh, you're a tick box, you're not a partner of ours and you're not on our website. And that's it. It's got to be a case of someone says this vendor would be a good partner for us, and then it goes down to the why. Why would they be a good partner? Is it just a short term idea? Is it tactical? Is it strategic? Are they incredibly competitive with another partnership? Is it going to cause conflict?  

 
18:19 
Don Campbell 
There's a lot of considerations to happen with these, but it's not just on to me. It would be like, think of it like a number of people having stake in this and being able to say, please don't go down this route is going to upset ex partners who's very good for us.  

 
18:32 
Dom Hawes 
But it's ultimately about capability, right? It's about being able to give best of breed solutions into the clients.  

 
18:38 
Don Campbell 
That's exactly right. It's one of those things where you almost have a conflict where you want to remain agnostic. You don't want to say we're all in Google, forget everyone else. You want to say we have an ecosystem of partnerships here and that's going to deliver the best value. Conflicting that you've got to put some skin in the game. You have to have skilled resource to deliver these. You can't just say, I'm not a partner of Adobe or Backbase and not have the skills there to deliver. There's the chicken and the egg scenario where you need to say if you are going to be a partner, you're also committing to something too. It's not just they accept you as a partner. You have to fulfill an obligation. There's a criteria to meet. So yeah, it comes in different directions.  

 
19:13 
Dom Hawes 
Is that commitment generally volume based, or is it volume by market or volume by region or a mix of all of the above?  

 
19:19 
Don Campbell 
A mix of all of the above. We're sector specific, so we have industry verticals. They're very informed in terms of the landscape that they're operating within. I don't go in and presume to be an expert. I rely on there for their expert value. We have subject matter experts within those units to tell us this is a trend that we're experiencing or this is a partner that we feel we could really develop and do something really interesting with. I'll pick one where we have a really good one and it's marrying up two partnerships, in fact. It's us again putting skin in the game to develop accelerators between these two platforms. They're very complementary, and it's one of those that delivers something unique for us. There's different ways to cut it up, but it's usually a mix.  

 
19:57 
Russ Powell 
Building out that ecosystem is that of both upstream vendor partnerships, downstream disti partnerships. How's that playing out at the moment?  

 
20:06 
Don Campbell 
Really early to say. You get to a point where thinking some partners are larger than others and we put that down so they have more of an appetite than others, but that does the other ones a disservice. It's just a case of it's a level of engagement. By the way, it's all tech partners. We're not distribution, not resellers, we're there to craft a solution on platforms. Almost all of our partnerships are that they're all technology partners. That ecosystem you will absolutely have, like in the payment space, we can't just be partners with a stripe. It's got to be a Stripe and a World Pay and Amazon Pay and Google Pay. The wider our ecosystem for that, the better it is for the customer, ultimately. You've got to be mindful that you're not just selecting one and giving one more of your time than the rest is going to be a natural ecosystem.  

 
20:51 
Don Campbell 
It's got to be a balance.  

 
20:52 
Dom Hawes 
Something I was really surprised about when we did our pre production meeting was that you include competitors in your partner plan too. How does that work?  

 
21:00 
Don Campbell 
With great difficulty. It's not easy. The reason it sticks out right. It's a mindset.  

 
21:06 
Russ Powell 
Right.  

 
21:06 
Don Campbell 
Why would you partner with a competitor? It's not like we're actively looking for competitors to partner with. It's more opportunistic if you know that there's an area sector or some area of solution that you would want to grow in, but you can't because there's a different type of footprint there already. There's absolutely a conversation to be had with a competitor. Be incredibly mindful that it's not going to be a long term engagement necessarily and you don't want to do it just for to win a one deal. It's got to be like there's got to be some more behind that to make it worthwhile because you're immediately opening yourselves to be a bit vulnerable. BUT Again, none of this means that you shouldn't do it. It's just if we're very mindful of it and we know what the rules of engagement are and we have an agreement to that respect, then they can absolutely work and do really well.  

 
21:55 
Don Campbell 
BUT Being realistic, you're not going to be sending each other Christmas cards for the end of time. It's going to be a case of, right, this is an initiative, we can cross pollinate, hate that phrase, but we can do something and yes, recognize they are competitor, have certain things, be off limits, be very transparent on how we're delivering things and keep each other on us because it's good for us both. But again, on a timely basis,    

 
22:21 
Russ Powell 
I Think it'd be good just to explore the relationship you're talking about with the hyperscalers as well because all roads seem to lead back to the Holy Trinity that sit at the top of the cloud platform. How have you found it working with those guys and where do you see that developing for the future?  

 
22:34 
Don Campbell 
The importance of the hyperscale is it can't be underestimated for us. Whenever I talk about partnerships, I talk about what a good partner looks like and that good partner is someone that is committed. There is a good level of engagement and a frequency of engagement and a result that you're delivering. And that goes both ways. Say we'll pick on Google, for example, whereas we have a fantastic Google capability as we do with Microsoft and with AWS, where we're committing to something. The account relationship we have, the partner account relationship have is really important. They need to know that we're working hard to win business that absolutely benefits them and it's that communication piece that is instrumental in waving a flag, saying hey, we're doing this and we're doing it on your behalf as well as our own. That not just be a again, back to the partner bit is a good partner, you're working together, it can't just be we're selling your services, it's got to be a two way street and that's be so important for us where we both have that skin in the game.  

 
23:35 
Don Campbell 
We're both committing to something and we're both delivering something which is meaningful and we're deriving a proposition for that. Whether it be for the payment world or the retail world, we're all singing from the same hymn sheet and that be something that were really clear with the partner, that we are doing that for them and they are doing it with us. Once we have that kind of relationship and they recognize it, you get more time with. Them. You're not a tea biscuit partner anymore, not that we would ever want to be. You are a partner who is actively helping their salespeople with their bottom line, with their targets and vice versa. It's got to be that relationship for us, always. It doesn't have to be those big three it's with all our partners. It's got to be that give and take, that to and from the whole give and taking thing.  

 
24:22 
Don Campbell 
You want to be the giver. You want to be someone that's bringing something to the party and they want that too. And that's a good partner for us.  

 
24:29 
Dom Hawes 
Well, time's marching on it's. That part of the show where we like to ask our experts to think really about a quick and dirty pest. We look to the future. Don and Russ with today's conversation is a lens. What advice would you be giving to marketers who want to continue delivering value to their businesses over the next twelve months? Thinking about the following things. Russ, maybe you'd like to start thinking about partnership alliances and channel generally. What worries you politically about the next twelve months.  

 
24:55 
Russ Powell 
The obvious one to talk about is the economic. I'm going to be incredibly political and dodge the political question and talk about the E of the PEST analysis because I think we are as we always are, in uncertain economic times, and those times are going to get even more uncertain as we go through this year. I think it's really just scrutiny on that marketing spend on every pound, euro dollar of MDF that comes through, that is being used, should be scrutinized anyway. It absolutely should. BUT the focus on that is going to be even greater, even tougher, and it's where the metrics and measures of success that we talked about before really going to have to drill into. Okay, any MDF I get in, especially when it's co-funded, when it's match funded as well. You absolutely have to just prove that pound is being spent in the best way possible.  

 
25:45 
Russ Powell 
Like you say, there's lessons learned to it as well. If you spend a pound and it didn't deliver what you thought it would, why did that happen and what do you do differently next time? I think that's the only golden rule there is of marketing, that if it works, do more of it. If it doesn't work, do something else.  

 
26:00 
Don Campbell 
The justification side, absolutely. There's nothing new that we're entering into a brand new phase. Undiscovered waters. It's a case of, okay, the traditional mindset is to batten down the hatches, freeze the spend, blah blah, and that's a course of action. There are other ones, and I always feel a bit sorry because it's something I like to talk about is this idea of venture building, fail fast. When you're in a squeeze for budget, you don't want to go down the route of fail fast. You just like, don't fail at all. You're like, okay, that goes to tried and tested. You go back to very traditional models of delivering things, but this is where sound like I drunk the Kool Aid for Endava This is where we do really well at. We love innovation, companies find us on innovation, how we deliver good solutions, how do we innovate in more frugal environments, shall we say?  

 
26:46 
Don Campbell 
And what do you produce from that? Where we have enormous talent in house and we have really good people and resources to build upon. We can do that and we do that anyway. And where the economics? Absolutely. Or the economy has an effect on that? It has an effect, very much so, on the prospects and clients we're dealing with, where they would want to react to a less optimistic future. And what do we do? This is again, what we do really well, is helping them innovate to become more resilient or to produce a solution faster, whatever it may be. It's an opportunity for us and there's an opportunity for anyone to go, how can I do this in a different way that forces innovation? So I don't always welcome it. I'm like, please bring this despair across to us as a case of no, but it presents that opportunity anyway.  

 
27:30 
Dom Hawes 
Look, I don't think we're going to dodge the political question because geopolitics is defining so much of what's going on at the moment. I want to come back to partnerships and alliances here because as a global organization, you must think about political uncertainty. I'm not really talking about our government, but we could be. I mean, we've got a war going on in Ukraine, there are problems trading in Russia, China. Are they going to come in and back, the Russians? We don't know. Are they tempted to look at Taiwan? Where are the Japanese and the Koreans in all of this? I guess from the global lens on, surely partnerships and alliances must allow you to operate in some territories where you wouldn't necessarily want boots on the ground. Or is that not how you think?  

 
28:08 
Don Campbell 
It isn't really how we think. Although the reality is that right, if you were to take a textbook reason for why you would do channel marketing, it would be to enter a new territory, it would be to enter a new sector. You do that with association through a partner. We tend not to take that approach. It's usually building on something you already have. We have an amazing client base and we have a really good prospect base and we're in a good position where even though we're very sales led, we're not overly salesy. We're there to have a relationship with our clients and our prospects and genuinely help them get the best of what they're after. That's by leveraging partnerships, it's by leveraging tech, people, whatever it may be. So, yeah, we don't tend to look at it don as like, oh, we're going to stay away from here or there, but in the same, we don't blunder in, ignorant to what it is.  

 
28:53 
Don Campbell 
We're very mindful of these things, incredibly mindful, but that informs us, as opposed to stops us,  

 
29:00 
Dom Hawes 
We’re onto S what Sociol cultural treads do you think are going to impact how we market and communicate using relationships over the next twelve to 18 months?  

 
29:06 
Don Campbell 
Endava is a very mindful organization so we are approaching things from a point of view where we want to leave the place in a better state than we find it right? That continuous improvement that should be running through a course of action that we do anyway. There are specific initiatives across the company that deal with that. There are initiatives that are just naturally within our culture. That are embedded into what we do, it goes into partner marketing too. Where we're fostering and developing a relationship with a partner, we need to have a matched ethos. We need to know that we're on the same. Page when it comes to things. The ESG side of things, it's front of mind for a lot of people for really good reason. You can see people who are greenwashing or whatever it may be, and you're like, they're ticking a box but unless you have it to heart, then it's not going to make a big difference.  

 
29:49 
Don Campbell 
That's a big area that we see. We feel we do very well in we're mindful of when we have a partnership.  

 
29:55 
Dom Hawes 
I'm not going to do the T, by the way, because you can't ask the T question to technology specialists. So ignore that. We can be here for another hour and a half. On a positive note, what is marketing's biggest opportunity over the next twelve months? Like the business of marketing, if there's an opportunity that we need to grab, what is it?  

 
30:10 
Russ Powell 
Yeah, I kind of feel ESG is incredibly important but I think it will relatively quickly become a hygiene factor it will be what everyone has to do because it's the right thing to do and it's like what's your ESG agenda? Well, it's this because of course it is. Because that's what we should be doing anyway. The opportunity for marketing is always as it has ever been.  

 
30:31 
Dom Hawes 
Really.  

 
30:32 
Russ Powell 
It's just about understanding people. You talk about technology, we've talked about hyperscale, we talked about platforms, partnerships, et cetera, et cetera. What it all boils down to is understanding what people want, how people make decisions, and building the ecosystem around that to deliver what they need and what they want.  

 
30:49 
Don Campbell 
I would echo that too. Maybe it not be one thing I always think of it in terms of our ability to articulate our brand or think of it like our promise, what are we promising to our customers and prospects and the opportunity is always there. I guess it's just ways of how you elevate yourself in a really noisy marketplace. Of course, I'm biased in terms of partnerships. We elevate with partners, but on our own Endava how do we communicate what our promises, that kind of ideation to the solution in the best way for our customer. That's always our opportunity. In the next twelve months it's what tools do we use to do that, what people do we use? Where are we leverage things best? It can't be with an agenda back here. It's got to be a real benefit to us and the customer to understand that we're Endava and we are there to help with the solution delivery of whatever pain points they have.  

 
31:37 
Don Campbell 
The pain points are far and wide and complex, but we love that. That's what we're there. We're there to solve problems and we like that.  

 
31:44 
Dom Hawes 
Well, on that note, we're going to wrap thank you very much indeed, both of you, for very interesting conversation. I hope to see you back in the studio sometime soon.  

 
31:50 
Russ Powell 
Of course.  

 
31:51 
Don Campbell 
Thank you Dom 

 
31:54 
Dom Hawes 
Well, that is the end of today's show. I really enjoyed recording this episode because I love Endava's Story but we did cover a lot of ground. I'm going to try and condense our conversation into just a few minutes of key takeaways. Point one is form partnerships with the customer in mind, like it's Marketing 101 to orientate yourself to the customer and the market. You'd be surprised how few firms do. As Donal said, Endava forms alliances and partnerships with technology vendors to deliver customer focused solutions. They don't differentiate between partnerships and alliances. They prioritize their relationships that deliver value to customers. Now, to me, that's orientation, and I think that's a model many can learn from. .2 partnerships, by definition, share upside, so bake in the KPIs you both value before you start. Donal ensures relationships are mutually beneficial by targeting specific vertical markets, building meaningful connections, and then evaluating each partnership on a case by case basis .3 creating value through partnerships is a team sport.  

 
32:57 
Dom Hawes 
Once you've committed to a relationship, you need to resource it to achieve gain. Now, at Endava, partner marketing activities threaded right across the marketing team, as we heard today, with a demand generation team split by territory and industry, and partner marketing efforts are coordinated to maximize exposure and collaboration. That's how to do it .4 true customer orientation means you might have to do the unthinkable work with your competition. Endava's partnership involve a mix of volume, market and region with a focus on technology partners to create a well rounded ecosystem. Endava partners with multiple providers in the same space ultimately benefiting their customers. But sometimes that's not enough. The best customer fit might mean working alongside a competitor. Donal told us that partnering with competitors can be challenging, but it is possible with clear rules of engagement and transparency. Now, I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's the last Unicorny we are airing for a little while.  

 
33:58 
Dom Hawes 
We are in the studio recording more, but next week, I'm delighted to welcome a popular Marketing Trek guest back on air. Yep. Next week we are speaking to Dynata Steven Millman. Now. He blew us away on episode 22, Breaking the Cookie Jar. When we talked about the implications of a cookieless future, Steve told us the future was further away than many think. Boy, was he right in the episode. Next week, we are going to be talking about data and ethics. What responsibility do marketers take in their organization? What is a good ethical base? Why are legal standards of data use not enough? And we cover so much more. But that's then and this is now. Before signing off, I want to say a huge thank you to Donal Campbell for his time, insight and contribution to the Unicorny project. Of course, I'd like to thank Russ for being an epic co -host.  

 
34:47 
Dom Hawes 
Thank you for listening today's show. Together, we're building a body of reference to make marketing work better for business. Now, it takes us eight to 10 hours to produce each and every episode of Unicorny. Please take the time to share, rate and review us, help us get found, and help yourself at the same time. Because Unicorny is far more than a podcast. It's a community of leading marketing minds. Pretty soon, we're going to be running events too. If you're interested in joining our community, please get in touch by following the Unicorny page on LinkedIn or connecting to me on LinkedIn. My name is Dom Hawes. You've been listening to Unicorny with me, Dom Hawes. Powered by Selby Anderson, the marketing group that helps complex businesses win the future. Unicorny is conceived and produced by Selby Anderson with creative support from One Fine Play.  

 
35:39 
Dom Hawes 
Nicola Fairley is the executive producer. Conor Foley is the series producer. Kazra Farusia is a superb audio engineer and editor, and the episode is recorded at Turnmillstudios.co.uk Thank you for listening and we will see you in the next one's.